


Assholes Anonymous

by spqr



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Male Posturing, Multi, OT6, Polyamory, Post-Avengers (2012), Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony-centric, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 05:12:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17502242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spqr/pseuds/spqr
Summary: “That’s not the point,” Steve snaps. “You can’t bring strangers back to HQ just because you’re blind drunk and thinking with your dick.”Tony sees red. “Maybe I am thinking with my dick, but it hasn’t been getting anywhere near enough attention lately, so unless you want to get down on your knees and blow me—“Steve punches him.





	Assholes Anonymous

 

As part of his latest self-reinvention, Tony goes under the needle. Gets a tattoo. An arrow pointing to the arc reactor that says _Do not touch_. It’s easier if he doesn’t have to explain. Expediates the transition between “oh my god, are you Tony Stark?” and “oh god, _Tony!”_

 

—

 

After the Battle of New York, Tony meets Pepper on the tarmac at Teterboro. He’s on one knee by the time she gets to the bottom of the stairs, still with shawarma stuck behind one molar, still in his piecemeal suit, still covered in blood and bruises galore. He holds out the ring Happy’s been keeping for him for four years and gives her his best smile.

 

Apparently prolonged exposure has made her immune to his charm, because instead of finding himself happily engaged, he finds himself _unhappily_ dumped.

 

—

 

If Tony were the sort of person to subject himself to therapy, he thinks a lot of the discussion would be about empty spaces.

 

He tries going to AA one time, and that’s what he ends up talking about. The mansion he grew up in, all vast atriums and pristine parlors and sweeping staircases, wide echoing hallways where he could shout whatever he wanted secure in the knowledge that no one would hear him.

 

Pepper and the legal team had a hell of a time keeping every word of the meeting from going to press the next day. Tony should’ve seen that one coming. There’s not really any such thing as _anonymous_ when your face has higher recognition stats than the president.

 

When he goes too long between drinks, his mind still wanders off into ideas about emptiness. Mansions, penthouses, photo albums, chest cavities. Sometimes he looks around at his big phallic tower in the middle of New York and wonders if he built it so tall because of his ego or because he’s like his dad. Trying to get as far away from the rest of the world as he can. Without Pepper, this place is dead. Cold. When he gets up to pee in the middle of the night—age catching up with him—he thinks he can hear his own heartbeat echoing back at him.

 

And yeah, how fitting that he should have a gaping hole where most people have a heart. His theoretical therapist would have a field day with that one.

 

—

 

They try to go their own ways for a while. That lasts all of three months.

 

Maria gets tired of having to wrangle them from all corners of the globe every time there’s a problem, so Fury sends down the decree that they all have to live together. Tony, being the only one who doesn’t live in a garbage pit or away on an alien planet, ends up hosting.

 

You know the rest of this story. Living together is tough at first, but eventually they realize they’re all more alike than they think. They come to understand one another, care about one another. Realize their broken pieces fit like a puzzle. Grow as a team, become a _family._

Yeah, not so much.

 

—

 

The first time hands are thrown, it’s because Tony flies a girl home in the suit.

 

It’s a recipe for disaster—he’s three sheets to the wind and when he lands, Steve’s waiting for him with his arms crossed like a disapproving father. He tells the girl—Miranda? Melinda?—to wait for him inside. She scurries past Steve with an awed, drooly look on her face. Great.

 

Steve doesn’t even look at her. He’s too busy glaring at Tony. It’s a good thing he doesn’t have any sort of laser vision, or Tony would be toast. Literally.

 

As it is, he’s going to try to fry Tony in other ways. “You can’t bring unauthorized civilians into Avengers HQ. And you can’t fly them around on the suit, that’s a security breach and a huge abuse of authority, not to _mention_ classified government property—”

 

“Whoa there, Capsicle.” JARVIS peels Tony’s suit off as he advances. “I’m gonna have to stop you there. First off, I _own_ Avengers HQ, so I think you know where you can stuff it. Second: _government property?_ Since fucking _when—“_

“Did you vet this girl, Stark? Do you know anything about her?”

 

“Yeah, she’s drunk, she’s horny, and she’s over eighteen. What else is there to know?”

 

Steve glares. “Jesus, Stark. She could be _anyone!_ She could be in there right now poisoning our fucking food—hell, she could be working for _Doom_ for all we know—“

 

“So what if she is? She’s ninety pounds soaking wet, I think we can take her.”

 

“That’s not the _point_ ,” Steve snaps. “You can’t bring strangers back here just because you’re blind drunk and thinking with your tiny goddamn dick.”

 

Tony sees red. A lot of red. “Maybe I am thinking with my tiny goddamn—my _big_ goddamn dick, but it hasn’t been getting anywhere _near_ enough attention lately, so unless _you_ want to get down on your knees and _blow me—_ “

 

Steve punches him.

 

Because of the whole _super strength_ thing, it knocks Tony out cold on the landing pad. Miranda—Melinda?—films the whole thing on her phone through the window. Luckily Pepper and the legal team are old hat at plugging leaks at this point. And Maria and SHIELD are even older hat.

 

Tony wakes up with a hangover, blue balls, and a post-it note that says _Not sorry._

 

—

 

A day later, Natasha corners Tony in the boxing ring, wraps him up in a triangle choke, and says, “You and Steve need to fuck it out of your systems.” Tony taps out, then lays on the mat for a long time after she’s gone thinking _what the fuck. what the fuck. what the fuuuuuck._

 

—

 

Steve Rogers has got to be the best bullshitter Tony’s ever seen. Apart from himself, obviously—he’s had forty years of practice. But Steve is…gifted.

 

He does an interview as Cap on Good Morning America, and Tony swears to god it’s like he’s watching a pod person. Steve smiles sweetly and compliments the female anchor in a way that seems gentlemanly instead of lecherous and gives answers that mostly revolve around things like _truth, justice, and the American way._ It’s genuinely astonishing how much Captain America and Steve Rogers are not the same person. He can say “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn” all he wants, but Tony knows that behind that mask is a grade-A bastard.

 

Most of the time he’s so impressed by the deception that he can’t even be mad. But _god_ , some days it really grates on him, this fundamental misalignment between Tony’s Steve and the rest of the world’s Captain America. It makes him want to yell and hit stuff. Hit Steve.

 

—

 

This is not to say that they never get along. Because there aren’t only two versions of Steve Rogers. There are at least three—Captain America, Asshole Steve, and the Steve who’s Tony’s partner.

 

When the bullets are flying, when alien ships are raining from the sky, when Doombots are tearing apart Grand Central Station, the six of them really are a team.

 

Steve and Tony have gotten used to each other’s command styles. Steve stopped trying to give Tony direct orders in the heat of battle sometime around the third alien invasion and started giving him strong suggestions. Tony learned to tuck his arguments in his back pocket for after the win and the debriefing. The Avengers fight like a well-oiled machine, like one body, like good sex.

 

It usually only lasts long enough for the post-battle meal. But it’s better than nothing.

 

—

 

Oddly enough, the first Avenger Tony goes to bed with is Clint.  One minute they’re guzzling cheap whiskey like it’s water and the next it’s morning and they’re waking up naked in the living room.

 

Clint groans and shields his eyes from the sun and says, “Oh, god. What did we do?”

 

Tony, who has dried come on his stomach— _ew—_ and a rather distinctive ache in his ass, replies, “I don’t know, but I have a feeling we’re gonna find the condom in an unfortunate place.”

 

Devastatingly, it’s Bruce who finds the condom. He freezes, halfway through flipping over the rug to look for a quarter he dropped. His face turns white, then bright red, then an alarming shade of green. There’s no one else in the living room, so he takes a calming breath, drops the rug back in place, and hightails it out of there.

 

—

 

Steve runs into another one of Tony’s one night stands in the elevator—a cute freckled redhead twink from one of the new gay clubs downtown.

 

The redhead’s flustered, of course. And Steve’s perfectly nice to him, even manages to find a pen to sign his shoulder right next to Tony’s sweat-smudged John Hancock. But once the twink’s down and out, Steve marches right down into Tony’s workshop to tear him a new one in the name of HQ security.

 

It goes much the same as last time. Tony tries to accuse Steve of being homophobic. Steve, flummoxed but still somehow overconfident, declares, “Oh, I’ve sucked _plenty_ of dicks.”

 

“Oh?” Tony blinks. “Do tell—“

 

“This isn’t about dicks,” Steve barrels on. “This is about your blatant disregard for basic building security procedures. You need to keep it in your pants, Stark—”

 

“Why don’t you keep your nose out of my fucking business, Capsicle.”

 

“We’re a team. I’m the captain. Your business _is_ my business.”

 

“I told you before, you’re perfectly welcome to get on your knees and—“

 

Steve takes a swing at him, but Tony sees it coming this time. He ducks, pops back up, and manages to crack Steve across the jaw. They stare at each other for a long moment, both stunned.

 

Then Steve tackles him.

 

—

 

Tony’s theoretical therapist, in their discussion of empty spaces, would probably bring up the wormhole. The nightmares, the tingle he gets on the backs of his forearms when he stands alone in a big room in the middle of the night. They’d probably take all that fear, all that instinctive mania, and connect it to the endless parade of men and women Tony marches through his bed. Something about human warmth and the comfort of another living body and filling the hole in his chest. A lot of people have called it _lust, greed, insatiability_. Maybe they’d call it loneliness.

 

—

 

Bruce wanders down to Tony’s workshop one morning after yoga with Natasha.

 

His curls are still sleep-mussed on top of his head, eyes sleepy behind glasses fogged over by the steam from his mug of tea. His t-shirt has the om symbol on it and his sweatpants are well-worn, soft. Tony sort of wants to shove his hands in there to see if Bruce’s skin is as warm as it looks. More than sort of.

 

“I need you to look at an equation,” Bruce says by way of greeting. “I’m stumped.”

 

“Yeah,” Tony says, dropping his work. “Sure, whatever. Point the way.”

 

They shuffle into the elevator down to Bruce’s lab. Tony tries to tease a conversation about medicinal weed out of him, but Bruce’s mind is clearly elsewhere. All Tony gets are a few mumbled answers and a raised eyebrow. Oh, well. It _is_ five in the morning.

 

Tony clears off a workstation and Bruce whips a copy of his work over. Tony reads it through four or five times before he realizes what he’s looking at. “Biochem isn’t really my strong suit, big guy.”

 

“Everything’s your strong suit,” Bruce argues. “If you could figure out palladium poisoning you can figure out this. Come on, just look at it.”

 

Under all the tiredness, there’s an edge of desperation in his voice. Tony rubs his eyes, plucks Bruce’s reading glasses off his face, and takes a look at the equation again. “Okay, this is—what? Rate of elevation in BPM under conditions of redistributed blood pressure against…”

 

“Against rate of depression for this, uh, chemical compound.”

 

“Bruce, there’s weed in this.”

 

Bruce scoots up to sit on the workbench next to Tony’s elbow. “Yeah.” He sips his tea calmly. Tony stares at the curve of his ass for a long moment before he manages to snap out of it. “I have a legal medical prescription, not that I think you care.”

 

“Hm,” Tony agrees. “This all checks out. It’s a little unbalanced, but if you change it it’ll just fuck the whole thing to kingdom come, so. What’s it for?”

 

Bruce mumbles something. Tony pokes him. “What? Use your words, Bruce.”

 

“It’s for sex,” Bruce blurts. “It’s to lower my heart rate when I’m…excited. So I can have sex without hulking out.”

 

Tony’s mind dives happily into the gutter. He lets himself think about it for a minute—Bruce blissed out and warm and pliant underneath him, movements clumsy and thick with chemical intervention. His hand heavy on the back of Tony’s head while Tony drags his lips and the tip of his nose over that cushion layer of chub on Bruce’s stomach, lower…

 

He blinks. “How’d you even get the numbers for this?”

 

“I, uh.” Bruce turns faintly pink. “I asked to borrow the hulk cage, and uh. Attached myself to an EKG and a blood pressure cuff, and. You know.”

 

And isn’t _that_ a lovely image. But Tony pulls his mind back in and takes pity on Bruce, directing the conversation back to the math at hand. “Well, you’re gonna want to make sure this compound doesn’t restrict bloodflow too much, or you’re gonna have an entirely different problem. Maybe you can take something for that—let’s plug in the numbers for Viagra.”

 

—

 

Tony and Clint make a habit of exchanging bodily fluids. It’s like their secret handshake. Tony takes his shirt off, Clint laughs at his tattoo and feigns trying to touch the arc reactor, Tony briefly considers letting him before batting his hand away. It’s fun. Easy.

 

—

 

When he’s visiting from Asgard, Thor has a tendency to walk around shirtless. Tony’s not sure if it’s a climate thing or an alien god thing or just a Thor thing, but he’s never met anyone so aggressively, openly boastful. It’s not just a _look at my glorious eight-pack_ thing, either. Every conversation with Thor involves some sort of magnificent recounting of his accomplishments.

 

To be fair, Tony figures he’d talk about it a lot too if he’d once slain two thousand bilgesnipe in the space of an hour with nothing but his bare hands.

 

—

 

Tony installs a sensory deprivation tank in the back of the workshop.

 

It’s sleek and white, pill-shaped. DUM-E spends three days bumping into it before he figures out how to course correct. Tony tosses a blanket over it and generally pretends it doesn’t exist.

 

Three months go by before he works up the nerve to try it out. His theoretical therapist would probably not approve of his confrontational method of dealing with PTSD, but Tony’s never really bought into all that headshrink shit anyway.

 

He waits for a night when the Tower is empty—Christmas Eve—and pours an obscene and irresponsible amount of hard liquor down his throat. Then he strips down and stands naked in the middle of his dark workshop for a few minutes, feeling that tingle on the back of his arms, the cool emptiness of the space brushing against the insides of his knees, the crease of his ass, the band of pale skin between his hips and his waist where his pants usually are.

 

Slipping into the thick, room-temperature saltwater in the tank makes his heart jackrabbit in his chest. There’s black tape over the arc reactor, not even a sliver of light escaping around the edges, and when he pulls the lid closed on top of him he’s in total darkness. Panic claws at the back of his throat, but he makes himself breathe through it. He eases back, lets his body float.

 

All in all, the experiment is a failure. He makes it all of five minutes before he forces the lid open and crawls out onto the floor in a wet, miserable heap. He forgot a towel. Classic.

 

After Christmas, the deprivation tank remains closed for a long time.

 

—

 

The next time Tony and Steve throw down, it’s during a briefing and it earns them both a ticket to SHIELD medical. Maria sticks them both in solitary confinement for as long as it takes them to calm down, then gives the both of them a stern dressing-down.

 

It has no effect on Tony, but when Steve comes out of his one-on-one briefing, he looks like a Catholic schoolboy who just had ten licks with a nun’s ruler. He brushes past Tony, and Tony can’t help but mutter, “Aw, did mommy spank you?”

 

That leads to a second round of fisticuffs, during which Tony tries to ignore how the press of Steve’s body at his front and the wall at his back is making all his blood rush south, and after which they garner a visit from none other than Director Fury himself. Fury is decidedly scarier than Maria, which is probably why Steve and Tony manage to get out of the building and all the way back to the Tower before they start round three.

 

This time it’s Thor who breaks it up instead of SHIELD security, and Natasha who gives them both their dressing down. It’s the first time today Tony’s actually been afraid, including the hour they spent fighting a giant slime creature in the Hudson Bay.

 

Because Natasha sits down across from the both of them, gaze as cool and sharp as ice, and says, “You two need to fuck it out, or I’m going to have to fuck it out of both of you.”

 

Steve’s mouth opens and closes like a beached fish.

 

—

 

Tony and Clint have a foursome in the hot tub on the roof.

 

Everything is drunk and everyone is wonderful and colorful and very blurry. The light from the arc reactor plays with the yellow LEDs and the chlorine. One of the girls brushes her fingertips across it in spite of the tattoo; Tony flinches violently in the water; Clint’s the one to pull her hand away.

 

—

 

 _Just a kid from Brooklyn,_ Steve always says.

 

But he turns around and passes down orders like he’s the second goddamn coming of Christ, holier-than-thou and prouder than anyone Tony’s ever met.

 

If you catch him at a particularly charitable moment, Tony might be willing to admit that they all have their vices. Their flaws. Steve’s a stuck up sanctimonious control freak who wouldn’t touch Tony with a ten foot pole, but none of the rest of them are much better.

 

Tony’s got alcoholism and promiscuity and unhealthy possessiveness and list of complexes a mile long, but we don’t need to get into that. 

 

Clint likes to throw sharp things very close to people’s faces and hands just to prove that he can. He spends his weekend swindling people at darts in dive bars because he’s salty that Hawkeye is the least-recognizeable Avenger. He likes to screw and doesn’t much care who he’s screwing.

 

Natasha is unfeeling at the best of times and downright cold at the worst. She cuts right to the heart of each and every issue without regard for people’s feelings, except when she wants to manipulate them to her advantage. She’s always, _always_ working an angle.

 

Thor’s a god on this planet and he knows it. He knows that he is something bigger and stronger and—he thinks— _better_ than everyone else, and he’s not afraid to remind them all of it.

 

Bruce is…well, Bruce is a sweetheart, but he is almost always operating with the disposition of a cornered animal. He bites and snaps and lashes out when he senses the rest of them getting too close. He flakes out of fights and disappears sometimes when they really need him.

 

Their jagged edges don’t really _fit together_ , per se. But after a year of the Avengers, nine months of living out of each others’ pockets, well.

 

Tony could draw you a map to each of his teammates in his sleep.

 

—

 

It’s not helping his fear of empty spaces, Tony knows. The Tower hasn’t been empty in months. Most days it feels like it’s full to bursting, all their separate spheres of domesticity intersecting in the kitchen, the living room, the elevator, the gym. He could probably steer clear of them if he wanted to, and he probably _should_ want to, if he really wants to confront this thing head-on, but it’s just _easier_ not to. Easier to bump elbows with Bruce in the lab and glare at Steve in the hall and dance around Natasha in the kitchen. It’s easier to be with them than to make himself be without them.

 

—

 

“I don’t do safewords,” Natasha tells him. “Keep it simple. If you say _no_ , I’ll stop.”

 

Tony’s not following. “I’m not following,” he says.

 

Natasha backs him up until he hits the edge of chair. He sits down hard. The chair rolls a couple inches and hits the workbench behind it. Tony’s brain still isn’t quite with the program, at least not until Natasha takes his belt off, leans so close to him that her breasts are pressed into his chest, and reaches around to tie his hands behind the back of the chair.

 

She steps back and surveys her work with a cool, calculating eye. “Are you following now?”

 

“Yeah,” Tony says. He’s hard in his jeans. Painfully hard. “Feel free to continue.”

 

Natasha raises an eyebrow in a way that somehow conveys _oh, I know I’m free._ She peels her tank top off, and then the sports bra underneath it. Two of Tony’s brain cells, which have been devoted to thinking about Natasha’s breasts since the first time he laid eyes on her as Natalie Rushman, fizzle and die. She shimmies out of her yoga pants next, in a move so suggestive it must be choreographed. Practiced. Tony doesn’t care. Her skin is tanner than he expected. The carpet matches the drapes.

 

She bends over and takes something out of a hidden pocket in her discarded pants. It’s so quiet Tony can hear the hum of the building systems around them. He opens his mouth, intending to fill the silence, but she stops him with a glare before he can make a sound.

 

His zipper seems loud when she yanks it down. She doesn’t take his pants off, doesn’t undress him at all. She just shoves everything out of the way so his dick can spring free, rolls the condom on him, and straddles him in the desk chair.

 

He can feel the warmth of her, so close to the head of his dick, hovering just out of reach. He tries to buck up into her, but it’s awkward with his arms pinned back and she shifts out of his way with a cluck of her tongue. “Patience, Antoshka,” she murmurs. Her breath moves her breasts against the outside of his shirt, pebbled nipples on either side of the arc reactor.

 

Her fingers wrap lightly around his dick. “Fuck,” he hisses.

 

She takes her hand away. Right. Quiet, Tony.

 

A minute or an hour or a year later, after he’s been good and quiet, she takes him in hand again and lines him up. He can feel her muscles clenching at the head of his dick before he’s even inside. And then she sinks down onto him, and _god. oh, god._ She rolls her hips, targeted, smiling faintly, like this is just another yoga position, and Tony chokes on his own tongue. She still smells faintly like salt and sweat, from her workout, and her breasts are _right there_ , but Tony can’t touch.

 

He can’t touch anything. She doesn’t touch him anywhere except where his dick is buried deep in the hot wet clench of her body. Balances herself on the arms of the chair and rides him smooth and steady and unrelenting, breathing out in quiet little huffs, thighs not even trembling.

 

She comes twice, muscles spasming around him, and doesn’t even falter. It’s like she’s just using his dick to get off. Tony can’t even string two words together when she’s done.

 

He thinks that’s what she was going for.

 

—

 

The next morning, he walks in on Natasha giving Steve a blowjob in the kitchen.

 

Steve’s flushed bright red, head tipped back against the fridge, eyes closed. He’s biting his lip hard, but then Natasha must do something fantastic because his mouth falls open and he drags in a big, ragged gasp, like he’s drowning and sobbing and surfacing all at once.

 

Tony pours himself a cup of coffee. He starts to leave, but then, for some reason, thinks better of it. He sits down at the counter, sips his coffee, and watches the show.

 

Steve’s eyes fly open when he comes. His back arches away from the refrigerator, hand buried in Natasha’s hair, and his gaze locks with Tony’s. Tony does his best to stay calm, stay composed, not choke on the sip of coffee in his mouth. But Steve _shatters_. Utterly. Fascinatingly.

 

This is Steve, stripped bare. And for the first time, Tony thinks that maybe there aren’t really different versions of Steve Rogers. Maybe all those pieces are just part of _one_.

 

Tony slips out before Steve can come back to himself. Steve doesn’t come after him.

 

—

 

For some reason, Bruce feels safe with Thor in a way he doesn’t with the rest of them. Tony watches them when they think no one’s looking, on security cameras and through glass walls. Thor’s gentle with Bruce, but Tony doesn’t think it’s the gentleness that matters.

 

—

 

It’s not lust that makes him dive into bed with anyone and everyone. Sometimes he just has to get out of his own head. Sometimes everything just seems too big and too uncontrollable. Sometimes he just feels it all too accutely, the deep-rooted certainty that he is an insignificant speck trying to fight against the tide of time immemorial. Sometimes he needs a fix.

 

Sometimes he needs hands on him, in him, around him. Needs to be reduced to the quantifiable reality of his body, its reactions and its idiosyncracies and its weight.

 

It’s probably not healthy. He knows it’s not. At this point he’s just a long cumulative series of shortcuts and workarounds and overrides, a Rube-Goldberg man poised to collapse.

 

Maybe everyone is.

 

—

 

On his forty-first birthday Tony gets rip roaring drunk and airlifts a half dozen co-eds to the top of the Statue of Liberty. And not, like, the observation deck. The _top_ top.

 

Thor shows up a few minutes after the news helicopters. It’s new and exciting seeing him fly around hammer-style in a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants, if the delighted shrieks from the girls are anything to go by. Thor defuses the situation by letting them squeeze his biceps and then flies them down to safety one at a time. By the time that’s done, Tony’s gone from happy-buzzed to _looking for a fight_. Luckily, Thor’s the only one in the vicinity.

 

They spend the night tossing each other around the Hudson Bay, and then spend the wee hours of the morning fucking against the panoramic window in Tony’s bedroom.

 

It’s not the worst birthday Tony’s ever had.

 

—

 

When they’re fighting back-to-back, Tony thinks he could care about Steve. He thinks he could love Steve, easy as nothing. He’s aware of Steve’s body like he’s aware of his own heart rate, and not just because of the vital stats on his HUD. He trusts this man with his life. He _knows_ him.

 

He’s been thinking of Steve and the Captain as different people. Three different people in one body. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe Steve’s not a very good bullshitter at all.

 

—

 

“Can’t sleep?”

 

Tony startles. It’s dark in the living room, but he can just make out Steve’s shape in the doorway. He’s in gym shorts and nothing else, the broad lines of his shoulders outlined in moonlight.

 

Tony debates getting up and walking out, because he can’t remember the last conversation they had that didn’t end in a screaming argument. “Yeah. I almost took my thumb off with a screwdriver, figured it was time to remove myself from the shop.”

 

Steve sits down on the coffee table. Tony offers him the bottle of scotch he’s been nursing for the last hour or so. Steve takes it. He guzzles a healthy portion, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and passes it back. “Some nights I really wish I could get drunk.”

 

“God, I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t get drunk.” It’s probably the warm buzz in the base of his skull that keeps Tony from saying something contrary just to start shit. “Jump off a building, probably. Moon Fury in the hall and let him murder me with a pencil.”

 

Steve chuckles. Tony feels himself smile in return, and it’s weird, but it’s…nice. He could get used to it—not being on edge around Steve. “You like that one, huh?"

 

“Sure,” Steve says. “Fury murdering you with a pencil?  _That’s_ something I’d like to see.”

 

“Asshole,” Tony snaps abruptly. “Have to go and ruin a nice conversation, don’t you.”

 

“You know I’m kidding, right?” Steve searches Tony’s eyes in the dark. Tony stares back at him, holds Steve’s gaze while the smile falters and melts off his face, while the teasing mirth turns to concern. Steve shifts forward. “You annoy the hell out of me, Tony, and sometimes I want to throw you out a window, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’d die for you.”

 

Tony doesn’t really know what to say to that. Mostly because he already knew, in some cordoned-off corner of his brain. “Yeah, Steve,” he says at last. “I know you’re kidding.”

 

Steve takes the bottle back from him. “Good.”

 

—

 

They don’t talk about their nightmares, but they all have them.

 

Tony’s got Afghanistan, the wormhole. Steve has the war, the ice, his lost friends. Natasha has whatever Natasha has that’s more classified than classified. Clint has Loki, and some “circus” he mumbles about in his sleep. Bruce has the memory of his dad’s fists and his mother’s cries and vague green-tinged visions of tearing men in half with his bare hands. Even Thor cries out at night, though none of them are in any position to figure out why. Bruce buys a Norse mythology book, pores through it, and Tony thinks he’s looking for a way to help but has no idea if he finds one.

 

They don’t talk about it, but maybe you’re not supposed to talk about these things. Maybe you’re just supposed to find people who understand without words.

 

—

 

Tony stares at his tattoo in the mirror. _Do not touch_. Dark letters against his skin. He can’t remember how drunk he was when he got it. If he was rational enough to be talking about the arc reactor, or deep enough into a bottle of self-pity and depression to be talking about his heart.

 

—

 

Bruce finds him on the floor of the workshop, covered in saltwater, naked. “Hey,” he kneels next to Tony like he’s a spooked animal. “You okay? What…Why are you all wet?”

 

“I’m always wet for you, sweetheart,” Tony slurs.

 

Bruce sighs. “Okay. Come on, let’s get you dressed—“

 

Tony shoves him away. “Don’t touch me.”

 

“Okay.” Bruce holds out his hands, palm-up. “I’m not gonna touch you. But you need to get up and get dressed, you’re gonna—I don’t know, catch a cold or something.”

 

Tony must get to his feet, because the next thing he’s aware of he’s sitting on a bench wrapped in one of the blankets from his couch and Bruce is handing him a steaming mug of tea. Tony takes it, sips it, is surprised to find that Bruce spiked it. “Ew. Vodka and chamomile don’t really go together.”

 

“You’re supposed to say _thank you,”_ Bruce tells him. He sits down on the bench next to Tony and rests his elbows on his knees. “Is that a sensory deprivation tank?”

 

“Definitely not,” Tony says.

 

Bruce _hmms_. Tony’s under no illusion he believes him, but at least he doesn’t push the matter. Tony puts down his tea and bumps their shoulders together. Bruce turns to look at him. Tony’s already staring intently at the asymmetrical curve of his lower lip.

 

It feels like nothing at all to lean over and kiss him. Bruce’s shoulder brushes against the exposed v of his chest; his sweater is soft, worn. Bruce presses a hand to the side of his face and draws away enough to murmur, “What happened to ‘don’t touch me’?”

 

“Touch me,” Tony says. “I changed my mind. Touch me.”

 

—

 

Bruce doesn’t touch him. He puts him to bed, but he puts him to bed in Thor’s room. In the morning Tony wakes up to gentle motion next to him. Bruce makes a tired, happy sound, and Tony’s body must recognize it before his brain does, because all his blood rushes south. He blinks.

 

They’re underneath the sheets, but that doesn’t do anything to disguise the motion of Thor’s body over Bruce, the blissed-out look in Bruce’s eyes, the clench of Thor’s hands in the pillows. Tony lifts the sheets to glance underneath, just to get a look at the glorious sight that is Thor’s thick cock moving in and out of the pliant heat of Bruce’s body.

 

“Fuck,” Tony says. He can’t help himself. Thor chuckles, a low rumble.

 

—

 

Pepper informs him over brunch that _whatever_ he has going on with the rest of the Avengers, it’s insane, unhealthy, and unprofessional and it better stay behind closed doors.

 

Tony accuses her of slut shaming him, but she reminds him that they’re trying to run a public company and six way polyamorous relationships aren’t exactly socially acceptable in New York City.

 

 _Five way_ , Tony corrects her. _Five way, with a couple unconnected branches._

 

—

 

If Tony were the type to subject himself to therapy, they’d have to talk about Steve. Tony’s theoretical therapist would ask why Steve was different, and he’d hem and haw but eventually he’d say, “Steve sees right through me. The others…I mean, they see more than most people. But Steve looks at me and sees…not just the rich asshole, not just Iron Man.

 

“He sees a kid who wants to impress his dad and a punk who knows he never will, and I…I don’t know. It scares me. I don’t even have to prove that I’m better than he thinks I am because he already knows I’m not. And the funny part is, I don’t even think he cares.”

 

—

 

They’re yelling again.

 

“You can’t just do whatever the hell you want, Tony!” Steve rips his cowl off and throws it on the floor. “I give you a fucking order, I expect you to follow it—“

 

“Really? After all this time, you expect me to follow orders?”

 

Tony peels out of his undersuit, picks up a hoodie, and tries to ignore the fact that Steve’s standing between him and the ramp out of the quinjet, flushed and flecked with blood and breathless and almost ugly with that furious look on his face except how he’s always rudely, devastatingly gorgeous. “When I’m the one giving them, yeah,” Steve says.

 

“What makes you so special, Capsicle?”

 

“I’m your captain. We’re a _team,_ Tony, you should trust me—”

 

“What, like you trust me?” Tony stops him. “That building was coming down, Steve. It was gonna pancake two dozen civilians—“

 

“Clint was getting them out.”

 

“Well, it would’ve pancaked Clint, too. Is that what you wanted?”

 

“I want you to stop and think about your own _goddamn_ life for three seconds! I shouldn’t have to _order_ you not to commit suicide by collapsing building, Tony!”

 

“Why the hell does it even matter to you?”

 

Tony knows the answer. He _knows_ —because every time he even hints at it, Steve takes him down hard, and Tony’s not stupid. He knows Steve would die for him, just like he’d die for Natasha, Clint, Bruce, Thor. And he knows it’s for the exact same reason. The thing is, it’s Steve’s off button. He won’t ever admit it, he’ll never admit it, and Tony’s tired of having this conversation.

 

But Steve doesn’t punch him. He slams him up against the wall of the quinjet, seizes Tony’s hoodie in his hands, and kisses him.

 

Tony fights against him at first, because he’s still mad. There’s still adrenaline coursing through his veins demanding a fight. Then Steve makes a sound like Tony delivered a knockout blow right to the core of him, almost a sob, and Tony gives in. He opens his mouth and pulls Steve tighter against him, pulls their hips together. They’re both hard, and hopefully the quinjet hangar is empty at this point because—you know what they say about unstoppable forces and immovable objects.

 

Steve tears Tony’s hoodie off. Tony manages to get him out of the top half of the suit, and then they both lose patience and just shove their pants down around their ankles.

 

Every inch of Steve from his forehead to his knees presses close and sweat-sticky and hot against every inch of Tony. It’s rough and fast and Tony’s legs give out but it doesn’t even matter because Steve’s like a brick wall holding him up. They grind together, dicks trapped tight between their bodies. Tony bites Steve’s lip so hard he tastes blood. Steve moans like it’s the best thing he’s ever felt.

 

“Come on,” Steve pants. “Come on, come on, Tony—you first.”

 

Tony takes Steve’s hand off the wall behind his head and puts it on the arc reactor. Steve’s eyes widen, just like they did that morning in the kitchen. His fingers spasm once against the metal, and he comes all over Tony’s stomach. Tony’s right behind him.

 

—

 

Natasha finds the two of them in the boxing ring. Neither of them are going easy on each other, because nothing’s really changed. She leans against one of the corner posts, waits for them to stop when they finally notice her. “I see you two fucked it out,” she says. “Took you long enough.”

 

Thor congratulates Tony and Steve at breakfast. Clint says _damn, guys, I’m feeling a little left out_ , and gets thoroughly ravished by the both of them on the counter for his efforts.

 

Bruce wakes up at two in the afternoon and greets Natasha with an absentminded peck. She smiles at him, steers him over to Steve, and smiles even wider when the Captain takes Bruce’s head oh-so-gently between his hands and brushes a kiss across his sleepy mouth. Bruce finds Tony’s eyes over Steve’s shoulder, and Tony just shrugs.

 

Later, he sends Pepper a text. _Six way. You were right._

 

—

 

Tony gets rid of the sensory deprivation tank. He’s starting to think he’s the sort of person who hides from his fears for as long as he can, not the sort of person who faces them head-on. Anyway, these days when he stands in the middle of the Tower penthouse at night, he doesn’t get a tingle on the backs of his arms, doesn’t hear his dad’s ghost whispering around the corner. Forcing himself to confront the empty spaces never really worked, but he’s starting to figure out that what _does_ work is the three king beds they pushed together in one room.

 

—

 

Steve gets on his knees. Tony would collapse like a puppet with his strings cut, except Natasha’s sitting behind him.

 

She runs her fingers through his hair, soothing. Steve’s big hands dig into Tony’s thighs. He hollows his cheeks and _sucks_ , and Tony couldn’t _not_ come down his throat even if he wanted to. Steve swallows like a champ, and Natasha puts her fingers on the side of his face to feel the shape of Tony’s dick in his mouth. “Told you so,” she murmurs in Tony’s ear. “Could’ve been doing this ages ago.”

 

Tony laughs.

 

She lets him go—he flops back down on the bed and just watches for a minute. There’s certainly plenty to watch. Bruce lays on his side, trapped between Thor and Clint, the smaller man’s hands clamped down on his hips while he pistons into him. Thor smiles fondly and catches Bruce’s pleasured cry in his mouth when Clint hits the right spot, and then Natasha is there.

 

Thor turns to meet her. She throws a leg over him and wraps a hand around his cock—and _fuck_ , he’s so thick her fingers don’t even make it all the way around. Thor tries to get a couple fingers in her to stretch her out, but she just shoos his hand away and sinks onto him in one move.

 

Her mouth falls open in a sound like nothing Tony’s ever heard before. She looks tiny on top of Thor, but he’s not gentle with her.

 

Steve—still hard, still with Tony’s come speckled on his chin—pulls Natasha into a bruising kiss. Her rhythm with Thor never falters, not even when Steve slips a hand between them and rubs savagely at her clit. She pumps his dick once, twice, and then Steve makes a sound like a dying man begging for water and Tony can’t stay put anymore.

 

He pulls Steve back from her and shoves him into the pillows. Steve bounces and starts to come back up, but Tony’s already on top of him. He takes the head of Steve’s dick in his mouth and swirls his tongue just to see how pretty Steve is when he’s gasping for air.

 

The answer is: really, really pretty.

 

—

 

They still don’t talk about their nightmares. But now, when Tony shocks awake and stumbles out of bed, they don’t let him go alone. Bruce goes with him to the workshop or Natasha takes him down to the boxing ring or Clint sits with him and drinks until they can’t see straight.

 

—

 

For a long time, Steve’s the only one Tony will let touch the arc reactor.

 

There’s not really a reason. It’s not a conscious choice, it just…feels right. But then, one by one, the rest of them take their chance and he doesn’t push them away, and it’s better that way. Better that they’re all together in one boat, all dug in under each other’s skin, all one body. He should add an amendment to his tattoo. _Do not touch unless you are: Steve, Clint, Natasha, Bruce, Thor._

He’s still not sure which one he’s talking about. The arc reactor, or his…well, you know.

 

 


End file.
